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The Land Hunger

Addis Tribune (Addis Ababa)
OPINION
November 5, 2004
Posted to the web January 3, 2005

HE MIND set of the typical Ethiopian landowner - who had mercifully kicked the
bucket in 1975 - was moulded by property rights. And, property, according to P.
J. Proudhon, is theft - what Bernard Shaw, the famous English critic and
dramatist, had called the only "perfect truism uttered on the subject".
Although property rights had died naturally over 30 years ago, its advocates
are still very much alive.
It is a statistical truth that eight-five per cent of the Ethiopian people are
peasants who are engaged in subsistence farming. To what extent are these
subsistence farmers contemplating the idea of selling their land to the
sedentary citizenry who have been always dreaming to dispossess them of their
property? Why else are the politicians in opposition constantly harping on the
right for land to be sold freely on the market?
As we see it, the EPRDF government has been certainly committing numerous
political errors since it assumed power now over thirteen years ago -
democratically and otherwise. However, it is wrong to be engaged in political
nit-picking with the government on its sound land policy. As a natural
resource, land should never be treated as a commercial commodity. "The earth is
the Lord's, and the fullness thereof."Remember?
It is a pity that the politicians who are trying to unseat the government are
appealing to the feudal instincts of the urban population to acquire landed
property. President Robert Mugabe too is being demonized by western governments
and their servile media simply because he had dared to dispossess those farmers
whose ancestors had stolen African land in 1887 under the leadership of Cecil
Rhodes.
There is a pressing need for us to develop industrially so that mechanized
farming would be a practicable reality in our country. Then - and only then -
can we talk more intelligently about moving the rural population to the
industrially developing parts of Ethiopia. Mere hunger for land on the part of
the politicians gravely affected by the congenital disease of landlordism does
not suggest a solution to our manifold ills.
Happy New Year!
TOMORROW marks the start of a new year in the global village. Europeans,
Americans, Asians, Australasians and the overwhelming majority of Africans
would be seeing the New Year in at midnight today in their respective
localities. After all, in a more conspicuous international world, no matter
where in the world we are living, the same sun is rising - and setting - on the
community of the human race.
There is no denying the fact that the past twelve months have been marking a
period of great trials and tribulations for mankind. Our sympathies must in
particular go to the peoples of South-East Asia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka,
Thailand and eastern Africa whose kith and kin had experienced death, injury
and deprivation as a result of the catastrophic sub-marine earthquake that had
struck them only a few days ago, killing over 60,000 men, women and children.
Several African countries have been also the victims of civil wars in the
course of the past 12 months. But nothing can equal the sufferings to which the
people of Iraq have been subjected. However, in the words of Thomas Paine(1737-
1809), the English political writer and thinker, "Tyranny, like hell is not
easily conquered, yet we have this consolation within us, that the harder the
conflict, the more glorious the triumph "
A Happy and Prosperous New Year!n

   

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